2,445 posts categorized "Pedophilia & Related Crimes"

February 02, 2016

"…I believe the time has come where serious consideration needs to be given by the broader Jewish community and government as to whether it is appropriate for [Chabad] Yeshivah to continue under its current administration and in its current form. It is easy to forget amid all this chaos that victims are still hurting and seeking justice by way of holding to account those trustees who remain in power, and that the safety of children within the school is paramount. I concur with another [Chabad] Yeshivah victim who recently said publicly that he does not believe that safety can be guaranteed in the environment that currently exists. I would urge the community to give serious consideration to forcing the trustees to hand the [Chabad] Yeshivah Centre over to capable and independent trustees who can administer the Centre professionally until such time as the community has developed the appropriate structures to have it back. Ultimately it’s the safety and wellbeing of our children – past and present – that we are dealing with. And this must always come first."

February 01, 2016

Did you believe Chabad's frequent claims to the press that each official Chabad center is a truly independent franchise? A new letter written to Chabad trustees in Melbourne, Australia by Chabad's organizational head Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky and the 1973 memo from his predecessor included with it should dispel that notion. But perhaps more importantly, the new Krinsky letter refers to the ongoing Chabad child sex abuse scandal in Melbourne this way: "We also acknowledge the severe difficulties you [Chabad trustees] have been going through for over a year and the aggravation and turmoil that have engulfed the entire Chabad community of Melbourne." There is not one word of consolation for the victims of the child sex abuse and not one word or regret for how the original complaints of child sex abuse were handled.

January 30, 2016

“The police were sent in an attempt to arrest Rabbi Berland on Shabbat [sabbath] night. This is a very serious crime. [Jewish law] speaks extensively on the rodef, a person who goes and tries to imprison his fellow in the hands of non-Jews. There is a commandment to stop him at all costs. And the law refers to a simple Jew…whereas we are dealing with a great Rabbi, a great Torah Sage [Berland].”

January 28, 2016

Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein, who was the late supreme haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv's point man on conversion to Judaism, says Elyashiv did not want most cases of child sex abuse to be reported to police – even though Elyashiv ruled in writing that credible suspicions of child sex abuse ("raglayim l'davar") must in fact be reported to police.

January 26, 2016

The alleged victims are three boys aged 13 to 14. The sexual abuse took place repeatedly over an extended period of time, and was based on misleading them about their halakhic (Jewish legal) status immediately after their bar mitzvahs.

January 25, 2016

Lev Tahor fled Canada for Guatemala in 2014 as a Canadian provincial government moved to take children out of the cult's care due to alleged child abuse and neglect. Now America's premier foreign affairs publication has a long profile of the cult that details the widespread allegations against it.

January 24, 2016

The third time was not a charm for South African police, who reportedly tried – and failed – to arrest Breslov hasidic Rabbi Eliezer Berland on Shabbat. But what really upset Berland and his followers is that the police had the help of Hebrew-speaking Jews who violated Shabbat in a bid to arrest him.

January 22, 2016

As the Gaza Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif was about to be forcibly evacuated by Israel just over a decade ago, settlement leaders, teachers and rabbis were allegedly doing something other than simply fighting the evacuation – they were allegedly actively covering up a string of child sex abuse complaints and harassing the alleged victims.

January 21, 2016

"…It has been 18 months since Malka Leifer was arrested!! Where is Justice? Where is the court system that is on the victim’s side? Where is Malka Leifer? Why is she allowed to hide behind her supposed panic attacks? Is rape not considered crime enough to be trialled?? Where is justice?…"

Chabad in Melbourne, Australia has released what it says will be its new organizational structure and the methods of electing or appointing the people who will be the lay leaders of Chabad institutions there. A close look seems to show that the disgraced old guard will still easily be able to control everything behind a razor thin veneer of very limited democracy.

January 19, 2016

Malka Leifer, wanted in Australia for 74 counts of indecent acts and abuse at the haredi Adass school in Melbourne, is still safe in Israel avoiding extradition because of her alleged frequent “psychotic episodes” that are better described by the professionals who examined her as severe panic attacks.

"…I am the woman [Marc] Gafni molested when she was 13 years old. This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name. If …[abused] children are lucky, someone will notice there is something wrong. But too often, the police are not involved, and these children are unlikely to be protected. I wasn’t.…"

January 10, 2016

Rabbi Eliezer Berland, the head of the Shuvu Banim Breslov hasidic sect, likely now has “a kind of diplomatic status, making him criminally immune" and is holed up in the sect’s secret compound “somewhere between Midrand and Pretoria." Berland is wanted in Israel for a string of alleged sex assaults against female followers, at least one of whom was only 15 when the alleged assault took place.

An 50-year-old haredi resident of Beit Shemesh, Israel was indicted today in the Jerusalem District Court for allegedly committing a string of more than 100 sexual assaults over a four-plus-year period against his young female relative.

January 08, 2016

Ex-rabbi Marc Gafni's alleged affairs (clergy abuse, according to some observers) and his earlier predatory sexual behavior toward two teen girls have put him in the hot seat again after the New York Times published an exposé on Gafni. But now Gafni and his team are talking about suing a publication for defamation to essentially warn other media outlets that writing anything but a fluff piece or praise of Gafni will cost you dearly. How do we know this? Gafni's team mistakenly sent a recording of Gafni's conversation with advisors, including his attorney, to the Forward. And that quickly led to a threat from Gafni's attorney to sue the Forward if it published the recording. The Forward published it anyway.

January 07, 2016

Rabbi Yosef Kolko will remain in prison. The former haredi camp counselor from Lakewood, New Jersey will serve the rest of 15-year sentence in state prison after a two-judge appellate court panel rejected his claim that he was coerced by members of the haredi community to falsely plead guilty to sexually assaulting an 11-year-old child in his care at the camp.

Based on recent reporting about ex-rabbi Marc Gafni and the people who still support him despite his history of predatory behavior, the founder of the Center for Jewish Feminism, writes about how guys like Gafni, especially rabbis still in the Orthodox community who are like Gafni, get and maintain community support despite allegations of sexual abuse.

January 06, 2016

Dudovitz has struggled with “fighting homosexual urges — not sexual predator urges,” his attorney told the court, echoing – perhaps unknowingly – the position of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who allegedly attributed cases of child sex abuse to latent homosexual tendencies and told at least some Chabad rabbis not to report child sex abusers to police.

January 05, 2016

The independent group of parents and their supporters that helped bring resignations of many Chabad lay and rabbinic leaders who covered up child sex abuse (or supported those leaders who did so) have asked Chabad's Melbourne Yeshivah Centre trustees for transparency, transparency Chabad promised months ago. But the group, PFYM, had to ask for this transparency in an open letter to the entire local Chabad community because Chabad leadership has consistently refused to answer private correspondence from PFYM or provide any real transparency at all. That stonewalling began in earnest just after lead abuse victim Manny Wax agreed to promote Chabad's efforts at 'reconciliation' with abuse victims – efforts that do not include reconciliation with the advocates, supporters (like PFYM) parents and other family members of those victims.

You 'wanton' women who walk around in short skirts and painted faces bring rape on yourselves, and every time you entice men by your dress or your actions you will be tortured in hell for it, Sefardi haredi kiruv (outreach) Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi (also spelled: "Mizrahi") says.

January 04, 2016

One of Rabbi Barry Freundel's self-made voyeurism videos was unlike the other 51. Rather than being taken in the mikvah (women's ritual bath), it had the backdrop of an apartment. Who was this woman? Whose apartment was this? And how did Freundel have the access to secretly video record her naked in her most private intimate moments?

January 03, 2016

It's almost a year since the Royal Commission exposed decades of child sex abuse and coverups at Chabad's Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Chabad promised Yeshivah Centre restructuring, which was due to be completed by last week at the latest. But it still isn't finished. And that may be because some of the worst offenders – at least in terms of nepotism and abuse coverups – are still in power, as a new letter from the centre's board of trustees shows.

On the lam for more than two years, fugitive from justice Rabbi Eliezer Berland, the head of Breslov’s Shuvu Banim hasidic sect, celebrated his 79th birthday with 79 balloons given to him by a small subgroup of his followers who allegedly came from Israel to South Africa to celebrate with him.

December 30, 2015

Martin Vegh wanted his sex offender status ranking reduced from the Level 2 status he was given. A New York State appellate court ruled against Vegh's appeal today. Vegh's case is perhaps best known because it was allegedly discussed on an illegal recording made by a PI working for haredi child sex abuser Baruch Lebovits. The recording was allegedly heavily and deceptively edited and spliced with other recordings in order to falsely incriminate hasidic anti-child-sex-abuse advocate Sam Kellner.

Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, one of the Orthodox Union's (OU) top two decisors of kosher food halakha, is seriously ill. Belsky is as well known here for his often negative role played in child sex abuse cases – a role that has sometimes bordered on witness intimidation and obstruction of justice.

“I can tell you from my own experience that the fire of Eros is a real thing. In recent years I have myself developed a capacity to experience and channel this energy in a series of tantric relationships. I have no doubt that it is real, that it has been experienced and described by many great poets and mystics, and that Marc himself is a powerful receiver and transmitter of it. I also have no trouble believing that in his early life he had little understanding or control over this powerful gift … Anyone who has gifts of this kind needs to learn to handle them responsibly and ethically. This can take some time, and even in the best of circumstances, people can get burned.”

In the wake of the Royal Commission’s investigation into the decades-long child sex abuse scandal at Chabad’s Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne, Australia, Chabad announced in June that new constitution for the center and its related organizations would be written and that all trustees and members of the center’s interim committee of management (ICOM) would down by December 31. But now they won’t.

December 21, 2015

One of the members of a large Hebrew language Facebook group for haredi and Zionist Orthodox women said she had seen a well-known man in her neighborhood patting a girl on a playground in a suspicious manner. She thought he may be a pedophile and asked the other group members whether she should expose the story or just warn the children and carry on.…

A surprise snap inspection by British government education inspectors has found the Beis Malka Belz hasidic girls school in the Stamford Hill neighborhood of London – the same school that threatened to expel students whose mothers drive an automobile – has an insufficient child protection policy.

December 19, 2015

Lord Greville Janner, at one time arguably the most prominent Jewish community leader in the UK, died today at age 87 after a long illness. Janner was eventually suspended from the Labour Party after multiple allegations of child sex abuse were made against him.

A new review study shows what almost every victim of child sex abuse and rape already knows: information and resources regarding effective therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are not easily available.

Parents and Friends of Chabad's] Yeshivah Melbourne (PFYM) is the group of parents and supporters who helped force change in Chabad leadership in Melbourne, Australia as Chabad's misbehavior and its coverups of child sex abuse were made public in the Royal Commission. But despite promises of transparency and cooperation, Chabad is now completely stonewalling (PFYM), as this latest example shows.

December 16, 2015

Berland, the head of the Shuvu Banim Breslov hasidic sect, has been fleeing Israeli justice for two years. He is wanted in Israel on rape and abuse charges. Most of his alleged victims are young married women who were his followers, but at least one of the victims was a minor at the time the alleged sexual assault against her took place.

December 10, 2015

Prosecutors made that deal against the victim’s mother’s wishes after they reportedly determined there was not enough evidence to take the case to trial – even though Karro admitted to hugging, kissing and fondling the girl in an attempt to show her love and spiritually cleanse her.

All of the charges Nechemya Weberman – a former driver of the Satmar rebbe and a major player in Williamsburg's hasidic modesty squad – was convicted of stand, except for two lesser charges of second degree sex abuse. The net impact is that Weberman's 50-year sentence remains the same.

December 08, 2015

Chabad in Melbourne, Australia launched a "redress scheme" this week to help and compensate the many victims of child sex abuse at its Yeshivah Centre. But it turns out this attempt to apologize, help and compensate the victims of child sex abuse does not include apologizing to, helping or compensating those victims' families and the activists who fought to have the victims heard. These secondary victims were ostracized, harassed and even threatened, but Chabad is doing absolutely nothing to provide them with redress.

December 07, 2015

"…It is to the victims, those known to us and those we may never know, I say this: 'You were each entrusted to the care of The Yeshivah Centre. All of you were blameless. All of you were just children. Each and every one of you had the right to be protected and cared for. You had a right to feel safe. You had a right to be educated in an environment that enabled you to reach your full potential. In each of these respects, we let you down, in ways that we can never fully make up for. For the abuse you suffered while you were in our care, on behalf of myself personally and The Yeshivah Centre management and staff, both past and present, I am profoundly sorry.'”

December 06, 2015

"…The Scheme has engaged Jewish Care Victoria to operate a confidential 1800 contact number for victims of abuse. This line will be operated by skilled social welfare professionals. A separate email address has also been established. All identifying information will remain strictly confidential to the Panel, the Jewish Care Victoria contact point and the third party administering payments. Details of any assessments or determinations made under the Scheme will not be provided to the Yeshivah Centre unless specifically requested by the applicant.…"

Failed messiah was established and run in 2004 by Mr. Shmarya (Scott)Rosenberg. The site was acquired by Diversified Holdings, Feb 2016. .We thank Mr. Rosenberg for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish Community.

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